Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous

PAX gameplay:

Timespike wrote:

I've backed WotR and yesterday I was home sick from work, so I pushed through to a later point in the story in Kingmaker than I'd previously seen - just finished up with the Rushlight games. The better signposting of what means what and so on in the Enhanced Edition is great - even simple things like "which piece of this artifact am I missing" and being able to compare a list of where the pieces are to the places you found the ones you have is so nice.

I am confused. I thought Enhanced Edition was a free update but I don't see all the stuff you've described. I am not sure which edition I bought back when I bought it, is it possible that I don't have the Enhanced Edition?

I'm in the early part of War of the River Kings (which is further than I've ever made it into the game) and just cleared out The Menagerie. I'm already looking forward to taking the fight to the source of all of this nonsense - and I also want to get Octavia home to her mom and can't right now, so I hope that area opens up soon.

Also: after looking at the stretch goals for Wrath of the Righteous, I'm starting to worry that I'll be in danger of literally starving to death in front of my PC as I try to figure out what character to play.

Seriously, though 24 (potentially 25 if late backers get the Hunter added) base classes with 6 subclasses each, a dozen races (many of which have multiple subraces) plus some unknown number of racial subclasses = head asplode.

I'm also hoping they up the number of prestige classes - but even if they cut them entirely, that's a crapton of options.

Timespike wrote:

Also: after looking at the stretch goals for Wrath of the Righteous, I'm starting to worry that I'll be in danger of literally starving to death in front of my PC as I try to figure out what character to play.

I know myself... I will end up playing the first three hours about 47 times.

Sounds about right...

imbiginjapan wrote:
Timespike wrote:

Also: after looking at the stretch goals for Wrath of the Righteous, I'm starting to worry that I'll be in danger of literally starving to death in front of my PC as I try to figure out what character to play.

I know myself... I will end up playing the first three hours about 47 times.

YEP.

Timespike wrote:

Also: after looking at the stretch goals for Wrath of the Righteous, I'm starting to worry that I'll be in danger of literally starving to death in front of my PC as I try to figure out what character to play.

Seriously, though 24 (potentially 25 if late backers get the Hunter added) base classes with 6 subclasses each, a dozen races (many of which have multiple subraces) plus some unknown number of racial subclasses = head asplode.

I'm also hoping they up the number of prestige classes - but even if they cut them entirely, that's a crapton of options.

IMAGE(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/42/Dungeon_AoW_TSR82124_180.jpeg)

Worm that Walllllllks. also I think i am going to have a really hard timing going worm that walks and also being some flavor of good...

Fun little side comment to that.

I run a 5e game on Sunday afternoons. One of my players (a neutral good bard/ranger) is playing Walrock Homebrew's Swarm race. He's an animate pile of crickets. Not one of those "technically good" PCs, either. That is one benevolent, kind-hearted pile of crickets.

I ran Age of Worms back when it was current 3.5 content out of a game shop in NW Florida back in the day. That experience is probably one of the things that got me hooked so hard on paizo and had a lot to do with my getting on the Pathfinder train instead of sticking with WotC content. The way they did paizo dirty really stuck with me.

I didn't come back to WotC until a while after 5e released. And there are still some folks at WotC that I really like (James Wyatt, for one) but the way they handled the 3e-4e transition was some underhanded BS.

Timespike wrote:

Also: after looking at the stretch goals for Wrath of the Righteous, I'm starting to worry that I'll be in danger of literally starving to death in front of my PC as I try to figure out what character to play.

Seriously, though 24 (potentially 25 if late backers get the Hunter added) base classes with 6 subclasses each, a dozen races (many of which have multiple subraces) plus some unknown number of racial subclasses = head asplode.

I'm also hoping they up the number of prestige classes - but even if they cut them entirely, that's a crapton of options.

I'm already planning characters!
Aasimar Warpriest Angel
Orc Barbarian Swarm that walks
Human Evil Inquisitor Lich
Aasimar draconic sorc Gold Dragon
Abyssal Blood Rager Demon (race undecided either aasimar or Orc, maybe Tiefling)
If the have the Dwarf specific Paladins they mentioned in the racial options I might make one to try the Aeon path.

In the class mod for kingmaker, the blood ragers seemed really powerful.
I can't remember whether it was the steel blood or spell eater. I think steel blood that had health regen that if working properly will be really powerful.

I just jumped on with a 60% sale price on Steam for the Explorer (base?) edition. Damn character creation process nearly defeated one night's worth of gaming!

I eventually went with a Sword Saint (not quite a Kensai) for my main character. Let's see how that goes, it's not my usual D&D Paladin.

I put another dozen hours into this over the weekend putting the kineticist and tieflings through their paces.
Lots of fun for sure and the tiefling options bring a lot of interesting bits to the table

I finally broke through the loooooong stretch of kingdom yesterday, and buttoned up for the night just after the chapter 7 splash screen came up. finally on the final chapter, with a wildly successful neutral good kingdom (put km on easy) and 16th or 17th level

So I've made it to the outpost, checked out the grove and ancient tomb.

After reading a few reddit / steam forum posts, I gave Amira one level in the alchemy line that gives her a strength mutagen for +4 strength and sneak attacks. I don't know why people say Amira lags in the DPS department - if anything, it's my Sword Saint who is underwhelming.

It's nice there's a respec NPC in the outpost. I may re-roll my character into something even more magic-based after the harrowing experience the spider swarms gave me in the fangberry cave. Other than not being prepared for the spider swarms, the difficulty has been alright on "Normal" setting:

Spoiler:

Well, except for the grove's Sorceror (demi-lich?) surprise in the top left corner of the map - the one with a campsite with full supplies and dead bodies everywhere...which I had to of course rest at just to see what killed them. But presumably that event shouldnt' be triggered at level 3.

Torches = dead spider swarms...

I'm nearing the end of the game - really looking forward to seeing how this thing ends. And honestly, now that I've played it once, I may give it another shot as a NG or CG ruler (Thinking maybe a cleric or inquisitor of Desna) and see how that changes things.

There are several interesting neutral only conflict resolutions. My capital city has both Goblins and Kobolds living um.. peacefully? along side my traditionally humanoid residents.

My LG capital has a goblin quarters.

I will say - I kinda hope the Wrath of the Righteous has a better balance of alignments in the companions. The spread of companions with DLC included was *heavily* weighted towards chaotic. Harrim, Octavia, Jubilost, Linzi, Kalikke, Amiri, Regongar, and Nok-Nok were *all* chaotic. The only lawful companions at all were Kanerah, Valerie, and Ekun, NG and NE only got one apiece, and NN didn't get anyone.

Timespike wrote:

I will say - I kinda hope the Wrath of the Righteous has a better balance of alignments in the companions. The spread of companions with DLC included was *heavily* weighted towards chaotic. Harrim, Octavia, Jubilost, Linzi, Kalikke, Amiri, Regongar, and Nok-Nok were *all* chaotic. The only lawful companions at all were Kanerah, Valerie, and Ekun, NG and NE only got one apiece, and NN didn't get anyone.

I know they are doing a better job with alignment tracking for the protagonist. instead of every action having a two part value, alignment will trace the two axis separately (the way it is intended in the source material) so you don't get weird things like paladins falling because they were too nice to their companions (mostly NG options that pulled them away from lawful)

It makes sense for Kingmaker to have been mostly chaotic because it is a very chaotic centered story, both with the fey and with the untamed land based around The River Freedoms.

I haven't read or played the WotR adventure path, but i expect it will lean a bit lawful, if only because it centers exclusively around Demons which are constitutionally chaotic evil. Although since the AP is built for 4 PCs I don't know if it would have had any pre-companions for draw from.

I don't see much talking about companions on the kickstarter, They revealed two in updates, a child Witch who i expect will likely be choatic neutral, and a Hellknight who will be lawful evil.

Apparently the iconic paladin (Seelah) will be in there too and she's LG. But yeah, I actually ran into that problem with one of my paladin PCs - tipped over into NG right before the battle with Vordakai. That was irritating.

Timespike wrote:

Apparently the iconic paladin (Seelah) will be in there too and she's LG. But yeah, I actually ran into that problem with one of my paladin PCs - tipped over into NG right before the battle with Vordakai. That was irritating.

yea it;s a Known Issue (tm) but i think by the time the problem was pointed out, it was way too late to try to separate everything into L-C and G-E

OOh I've always liked Seelah's character design, i'm happy to see her in there.

thrawn82 wrote:
Timespike wrote:

Apparently the iconic paladin (Seelah) will be in there too and she's LG. But yeah, I actually ran into that problem with one of my paladin PCs - tipped over into NG right before the battle with Vordakai. That was irritating.

yea it;s a Known Issue (tm) but i think by the time the problem was pointed out, it was way too late to try to separate everything into L-C and G-E

OOh I've always liked Seelah's character design, i'm happy to see her in there.

Yeah, she's super cool. I know this is a pipe dream, but I'd love it if they got Simone Missick to voice her.

I'm enjoying the crawl, it's really fun to play old school D&D rules again. The whole timer bar with pause works just fine for me.

I just finished the Stag Lord arc but haven't gone back to report. Why would I when I've got another 33 days to run around and explore the map

Also, can someone explain to my why giving everyone a Thug multi-class is a bad idea? Because that extra improved sneak attack 2d6 is huge in the early levels.

Bfgp wrote:

I'm enjoying the crawl, it's really fun to play old school D&D rules again. The whole timer bar with pause works just fine for me.

I just finished the Stag Lord arc but haven't gone back to report. Why would I when I've got another 33 days to run around and explore the map

Also, can someone explain to my why giving everyone a Thug multi-class is a bad idea? Because that extra improved sneak attack 2d6 is huge in the early levels.

because vivsectionist alchemist gives you the same sneak attack plus a mutagen with an untyped stat boost (and penalty) so unless you want to go dazzling display + (whatever the feat is that does a dazzling display whenever you kill something) you should go with that instead with everyone.

i will say, dazzling display combined with the thugs shaken to frightened upgrade is really really powerful.

I gave my paladin 3 levels of Slayer (deliverer) for some sneak attack at the beginning and then switched to paladin thereafter. No hit to BAB and a little extra non-expendable damage output is nice.

i kinda want to try one of those crane monk paladin builds... but i definitely do not have another full play through of this game in me, it'll have to wait for wrath